Graphic Advocacy: International Posters for the Digital Age 2001–2012

“Now, instead of a mass audience consuming media from a single source, we have multiple sources, multiple channels and multiple audiences. Every participant is potentially a sender as well as a receiver of information, and the barrier to entry is no longer the fortune required to set up a TV station or a newspaper, but the price of a PC and an Internet connection. Much of contemporary political graphics in particular is designed with the internet in mind…with the steady growth of broadband connection, a full-color poster can be created as a digital file small enough either to send by email or to download from a website set up for the purpose, and printed by the recipient in as many copies as necessary or simply passed on digitally.”

—Colin Moore, Propaganda Prints: A History of Art in the Service of Social and Political Change, A+C Books, London, 2011

Graphic Advocacy: International Posters for the Digital Age 2001–2012 is the third exhibition in a trilogy focusing on socially conscious posters*, Graphic Advocacy features 122 works from 32 countries worldwide. As a medium for social change, posters record our struggles for peace, social justice, environmental defense, and liberation from oppression. From the confrontational and political, to the promotional, persuasive and educational, the poster in all its forms has persisted as a vehicle for the public dissemination of ideas, information, and opinion. Ready access to broadband and mobile communications and to digital production technologies has expanded the poster’s role beyond the printed surface, creating a contemporary tool for support and protest that is still a cornerstone of 21st century advocacy.

Website for Graphic Advocacy will be on-line by the end of January 2013: www.graphicadvocacyposters.org

Posters for the Digital Age, by Elizabeth Resnick, will be published by Vivays Publishing Company, Ltd. London in Fall 2013. The book contains 150 poster images, 122 posters from the exhibition plus 28 more.January 15–March 2, 2013

Opening Reception:
Tuesday, January 29, 6:00-8:00 p.m., light refreshments
Open and free to the public

Elizabeth Resnick, professor and current Chair of Graphic Design at Massachusetts College of Art and Design, holds both a B.F.A. and M.F.A. in Graphic Design from the Rhode Island School of Design. She has served on the Board of Directors of the AIGA Boston chapter and has organized numerous graphic design lectures and events over the past 15 years including six large exhibitions: Russell Mills: Within/Without (1991) with Teresa Flavin; Dutch Graphic Design: 1918-1945 (1994) with Alston W. Purvis; Makoto Saito: Art of the Poster (1999) with Jan Kubasiewicz.; The GraphicImperative: International Posters of Peace, Social Justice and The Environment (2005) with Chaz Maviyane-Davies and Frank Baseman; Graphic Intervention: 25 Years ofInternational AIDS Awareness Posters 1985–2010 with Javier Cortés (2010); and Graphic Advocacy: International Posters for the Digital Age: 2001–2012 (2012). Her book publications include “Design for Communication: Conceptual Graphic DesignBasics” for John Wiley & Sons Publishers (2003), and “Graphic Design: A Problem-Solving Approach to Visual Communication for Prentice-Hall Publications” (1984).

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Maria Papaefstathiou or else "It's Just Me", is a graphic designer, illustrator, blogger and curator. She is the owner (and writer) of the www.graphicart-news.com. Co-founder of the International Reggae Poster Contest. She is also the curator and art-representative of artist Michael Thomspson aka Freeestylee. Maria's favourite styles are cubism and futurism. In her constant quest to find new concepts of illustrating as an arrangement of forms and colours she is experimenting in illustrating in cubism style. At the same time she adores to illustrate portraits, an effort that connects her with the persons she illustrates and forces herself to bring out their soul by using lines, colours and shapes. Her ultimate desire is to constantly inspire people and expand their work all over the world.